LA Times Kills Column Advocating Princely CD Giveaway

LA Times columnist Patrick Goldstein wrote his latest piece about how the paper would stand to benefit by including free music — much like the UK’s Mail on Sunday did with Prince’s latest album. The first sentence of the column was, "How would you like to pick up thisnewspaper one day and get a free CD or an MP3 file of new music fromone of your favorite musicians?"

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But in Los Angeles, where much of the US music industry is located, advocating the giving away of music — no matter how much sense or money it might make — is like telling a real estate developer to turn their front lawn into a federal wetland. They’re just not into it.

LA Times associate news editor John Montorio apparently killed Goldstein’s "CD giveaway" column rather than risk upsetting a music establishment almost comically allergic to tampering with its decades-old business plan (sign act, sell copies, buy house in the hills). But the column sprouted online, and could now gain even wider distribution than if the LA Times had published it in the first place.

(I wasn’t entirely sure about this story initially, but so many other outlets are running it now that the column appears to be legit; I’ve posted the full text after the break.

How would you like to pick up thisnewspaper one day and get a free CD or an MP3 file of new music fromone of your favorite musicians? Earlier this month England’s Mail onSunday and Prince — two symbols of two embattled businesses — stucktheir big toes into the future, a future that has looked increasinglybleak for both the record industry and the newspaper business. In amove that sent shock waves across the British music business, thecountry’s leading tabloid distributed 2.9 million free copies ofPrince’s new "Planet Earth" CD with its Sunday paper, reaping apublicity bonanza and a big bump in advertising as well.

But thereal winner was Prince. In an era where record sales are plummeting,
Prince got his new music into the hands of millions of fans whilepocketing a reported $500,000 payment from the paper. Most record storeowners in England have protested by refusing to carry the artist’s newCD while his record company, Sony, has suspended its release inEngland. But Prince, who seems to have as much brilliance as anentrepreneur as an artist, is laughing all the way to the bank.

Like most artists his age, Prince, 49, doesn’t top the charts anymore.
His last album, "3121," sold roughly 80,000 copies in the UK. He makesmost of his money through touring — his last major tour, in 2004, sold$87.4 million in tickets, dwarfing anything he could make from CD
sales. For him, giving away his record free — as he is for anyone whobuys a ticket to one of his UK concerts, most of which have alreadysold out — is a way of creating exposure and excitement. That transfersinto concert sales, which is how most artists, outside of a few popstars, make the vast majority of their money these days. What olderartists need today is a marketing partner, not a record company. TheEagles have Wal-Mart, Paul McCartney has Starbucks and now Prince hasthe Mail on Sunday.

Amazingly, much of the media coverage of thegiveaway treated the event as a PR stunt. After all, the anti-gay,
anti-immigration Mail is hardly natural Prince territory — in HarryPotter, the paper is favorite reading material for Vernon Dursley. Butthe strange alliance offers a striking example of how two strugglingbusinesses could reinvent themselves. In fact, I have to admit that myprofessional assessment of the giveaway quickly gave way to a much morepersonal reaction.

Why couldn’t my newspaper do that?

Newspapers, as you may have heard, are in deep doo-doo. While theTimes still is a profitable business, our revenue was down 10% in thesecond quarter while our cash flow was down, as our publisher put itthe other day, a "whopping 27%, making it one of the worst quartersever experienced." Times are so hard at the Times that the publisherhas proposed putting ads on the front page to generate new revenue.

So far we’ve made little headway developing imaginative strategies tobring back lost readers — or compete for younger readers who get theirinformation from the Internet. The record business has been just asslow to provide fans online with new, convenient ways to hear music —
the only visionary idea, Steve Jobs’ iTunes store, came from outsidethe business. Unless you are a mainstream pop artist, it’s hard to seehow the old-fashioned record company model benefits your careeranymore. If you’re a respected older performer — known in industryparlance as a heritage artist — your biggest challenge is finding a wayto get your music heard.

That’s where the newspaper comes in. As the Mail on Sunday has shown,
newspapers remain a formidable distribution machine. My paper hasroughly 1.1 million Sunday subscribers and generates 65 million pageviews each month. If you’re a heritage artist looking for exposure withan audience that might appreciate your work and has proven by reading anewspaper that it’s curious about the outside world, what could be abetter starting point than the Times?

Here’s how it might work.
The Times would start a free-music series, offering music (either on aCD or via downloads) from respected artists willing to think outsidethe box — meaning anyone from Elvis Costello, Beck and Ryan Addams toRy Cooder, Steve Earle and Lucinda Williams. Instead of paying theartist a fat fee, we’d recruit advertising sponsors who’d be delightedto be associated with classy artists and the imprint of the Times.
If you haven’t noticed, music has a powerful mojo for advertisers. TV
commercials have used pop songs to sell product for years. Lexuscurrently has a series of TV ads featuring Costello and John Legendseated in a Lexus, simply talking about their favorite music (Elvissings the praises of Beethoven). But what they’re really selling iscoolness by association. The same association could apply to us via agiveaway series. It would encourage readers to see the paper in a newlight, as not just a news-gathering organization but a cultural engine.
If we surrounded the music with news, reviews and features from ourstaff, it could also expose new visitors to our formidable musiccritics and reporters.

Could this really work? For a realitycheck, I called Jim Guerinot, an industry free-thinker who manages NineInch Nails, Gwen Stefani and Social Distortion. "Are you kidding —
that’s a great idea," he says. "There are tons of these Hall-of-Famequality heritage artists who don’t sell records anymore. It would be areal coup for them to reach their target demo through the newspaper andhave the cachet of being an artist of the week or month."

Having the Times showcase new music would do more than attractadvertising — it would help transform the image of the paper. "It couldredefine the paper by making it a destination site for music fans,"
says Guerinot. "On the net, the big challenge is always about providinga filter for people. It would make the Times, with its critical voice,
into a gatekeeper. People are looking for someone to show them the way— why shouldn’t it be the L.A. Times?"

Newspapers don’t just neednew readers, we need new ways to serve them. So why shouldn’t we useone of our core strengths — our entertainment coverage — as a way totransform our web site’s pop music page into a place where you wouldn’tjust find us writing about music, but find the music itself? It notonly makes the paper feel more relevant, but it would create a newincome stream that might be less intrusive than putting ads on thefront page.

"What you’d be doing is turning the paper into arecommendation engine," says Fred Goldring, a leading industryattorney. "Everywhere you look, from car ads to the NBA, music is a bigpart of everything that sells. You wouldn’t just be giving away music,
you’d be doing something no one else does better educating theconsumer." I can’t guarantee that my bosses will instantly embracethis idea — they don’t often look to columnists for business acumen.
And there are plenty of naysayers. Retail outlets could punish artiststhat give away music by refusing to carry their new CDs, as they did inEngland with Prince. Cliff Burnstein, who manages the Red Hot ChiliPeppers, believes music giveaways work better in England where "popmusic is a national sport and the audience is a lot less fragmentedthan in the U.S."

But Prince’s gambit won’t be a one-shot deal.
The British ska group Madness is considering a similar newspapergiveaway for its next album. One of Burnstein’s bands, Snow Patrol, istouring Australia in September. Since few fans bought its first albumthere, the group is mailing the first album free to anyone who buysconcert tickets, bumping up the ticket price to pay for it, figuringthe fans will enjoy the concerts more if they’re more familiar with theband’s earlier music.

Giving music away doesn’t mean it has lost its value, just that itsvalue is no longer moored to the price of a CD. Like it or not, the CD
is dying, as is the culture of newsprint. People want their music — andtheir news — in new ways. It’s time we embraced change instead ofalways worrying if some brash new idea — like giving away music — wouldtarnish our sober minded image. When businesses are faced with radicalchange, they are usually forced to ask — is it a threat or anopportunity? Guess which choice is the right answer.